How did the Brits do it?

(ArtKramr) wrote:

I think back to the war and the RAF heavies on their night missions. Missions
flown in the winter usually were in atrocioius weather where there was no view
of the gound and the sky above was overcast. There was no way to shoot at star
fix or take a dirft reading from the ground. Working dead reckoning from
England deep into Germany and any change in wind dorection or velocity that
went undetected made dead reckoning navigation a hit and miss proposition.
Often it was not just miss, it was gross miss. Knowing all this how could the
RAF ever hope to pull off these winter night missions successfully? What was
the logic that made them keep flying under these hopeless navigation
conditions? Anyone know?

Welcome to the brass balls world of the intrepid freight dog,
barnstormer, firefighter, bush pilot, cropduster, etc.

Nothing mysterious here -- the Brits did it the same way the Yanks,
Canucks, Jerries and everyone else did it in crappy weather all over
the world (not just in Europe).

Latest weather report from the ol' teletype machine in hand, you
would launch into the nighttime "can't-see-****" conditions and fly on
instruments while staying on course via a variety of (potentially
deadly!) methods. Such methods included, but were not limited to:

1) Radioing other airplanes in the sky so they can take bearings on
your position or extend a trailing wire antenna and crank the Gibson
Girl (emergency transmitters originally developed by the Luftwaffe)
and navigate via direction-finding equipment and your not-so-trusty
mag compass, and...

2) When push came to shove, descend below the clouds to treetop
level (this, now THIS took "mas grande cajones!") and wander
back and forth across a course you "assume" to be correct while
taking fixes as quickly as possible while hedgehopping to indicate of
any deviations off-course while simultaneously scanning for possible
marker flares or fires from your comrades on the ground before
climbing back up into the soup and continuing on to your target.

ubject: How did the Brits do it?
From: "Emmanuel Gustin"
Date: 3/10/04 2:51 PM Pacific Standard Time
Message-id:

"ArtKramr" wrote in message
...

We didn't get Gee until late in 1944 when we flew our first Gee
mission..Hated
it because we couldn't see the damage we had (or had not) done. I remember
the
briefing before the first Gee mission. we were ttoldf the Germans knew
nothing
about Gee. On our first mission we got German jamming grass over our
scopes.

It is even worse: The Germans were using GEE well before
you were. For 'Steinbock', the German bombing offensive
against Britain in the first four months of 1944, German
bombers were equipped with GEE receivers, either salvaged
from British bombers ('Hyperbel') or German-made ('Truhe').
That close to the transmitters, GEE signals were of course
hardly affected by German jamming. The British were unaware
of it until they discovered oddly familiar-looking equipment
in a shot-down German bomber...

'Steinbock' was a failure nevertheless, the RAF's nightfighter
defenses were too strong.

--
Emmanuel Gustin
Emmanuel.Gustin -rem@ve- skynet dot be
Flying Guns Page: http://users.skynet.be/Emmanuel.Gustin/



Interesting. Do you know where the German Gee transmitters were located? Were
there also three of them?


Arthur Kramer
344th BG 494th BS
England, France, Belgium, Holland, Germany
Visit my WW II B-26 website at:
http://www.coastcomp.com/artkramer

Subject: How did the Brits do it?
From: "Emmanuel Gustin"
Date: 3/10/04 4:15 PM Pacific Standard Time
Message-id:

"ArtKramr" wrote in message
...

Interesting. Do you know where the German Gee transmitters were located?
Were
there also three of them?

AFAIK they simply tuned their equipment to the British GEE
transmitters! The basic Gee (unlike Gee-H) was not a transponder
system, so they only needed the receiver to measure the phase
shifts, and then Gee worked for the Luftwaffe as well as the RAF.

The Allies did something similar with a German (naval) navigation
system, which turned out to be so efficient that it survived the war
a long time. Unlike Gee -- Wattson-Watt made an effort to have
Gee adopted by airlines, but the American airlines were having
none of it; it was too expensive and complicated to operate.

--
Emmanuel Gustin
Emmanuel.Gustin -rem@ve- skynet dot be
Flying Guns Page: http://users.skynet.be/Emmanuel.Gustin/




We didn't fly Gee until well after D-Day. I remember that we used three
transmitters. As I remember it there was one in southern France, another in
Denmark, Don't remember where the third one was. Do you know?


Arthur Kramer
344th BG 494th BS
England, France, Belgium, Holland, Germany
Visit my WW II B-26 website at:
http://www.coastcomp.com/artkramer

We didn't fly Gee until well after D-Day. I remember that we used three
transmitters. As I remember it there was one in southern France, another
in
Denmark, Don't remember where the third one was. Do you know?

There were at least two in the UK and right on the heels of the invasion, if I
remember rightly, the Allies brought one ashore.

v/r
Gordon
====(A+C====
USN SAR

Donate your memories - write a note on the back and send your old photos to a
reputable museum, don't take them with you when you're gone.

"ArtKramr" wrote in message
...
I think back to the war and the RAF heavies on their night missions.
Missions
flown in the winter usually were in atrocioius weather where there was no
view
of the gound and the sky above was overcast. There was no way to shoot at
star
fix or take a dirft reading from the ground. Working dead reckoning from
England deep into Germany and any change in wind dorection or velocity
that
went undetected made dead reckoning navigation a hit and miss
proposition.
Often it was not just miss, it was gross miss. Knowing all this how could
the
RAF ever hope to pull off these winter night missions successfully? What
was
the logic that made them keep flying under these hopeless navigation
conditions? Anyone know?

The "logic" was simple. The Brits strategy was to drop bombs at night
regardless of whether or not the intended target was in sight Some targets
were missed entirely, but the bombs could cause terror instead, which was in
itself an objective.

On 10 Mar 2004 14:01:30 GMT, (ArtKramr) wrote:

I think back to the war and the RAF heavies on their night missions. Missions
flown in the winter usually were in atrocioius weather where there was no view
of the gound and the sky above was overcast. There was no way to shoot at star
fix or take a dirft reading from the ground. Working dead reckoning from
England deep into Germany and any change in wind dorection or velocity that
went undetected made dead reckoning navigation a hit and miss proposition.
Often it was not just miss, it was gross miss. Knowing all this how could the
RAF ever hope to pull off these winter night missions successfully? What was
the logic that made them keep flying under these hopeless navigation
conditions? Anyone know?


Arthur Kramer
344th BG 494th BS
England, France, Belgium, Holland, Germany
Visit my WW II B-26 website at:
http://www.coastcomp.com/artkramer

One way used was radio direction finding nad measuing the angles on
the source of german propraganda broadcasts...

Lord Haw Haw was apparantly used a fair bit as he was begining his
nightly braodcasts to reach the british public on dark winter nights
as the bombers were crossing the channel

ironic isn't it... the germans providing their own targettign for the
brits

In message , rnf2
writes

snip

One way used was radio direction finding nad measuing the angles on
the source of german propraganda broadcasts...

Lord Haw Haw was apparantly used a fair bit as he was begining his
nightly braodcasts to reach the british public on dark winter nights
as the bombers were crossing the channel

ironic isn't it... the germans providing their own targettign for the
brits

The Germans shut down their B/C transmitters in groups as the bomber
stream passed over. This allowed the high power transmitter Aspidestra
at Crowborough (800 kW) to butt in on their frequency and play dance
tunes and relay false news programmes. Sefton Delmer 'Black Propaganda'.

Mike
--
M.J.Powell

rnf2 writes:


One way used was radio direction finding nad measuing the angles on
the source of german propraganda broadcasts...

DF on known emitters is an old ploy. You can tell where YOU are, or
where IT is. That was why Eisenhower's SHAEF transmitter was in the
area of Patton's First US Army Group.

There was also one German navaid that was not jammed but spoofed; a
receiver at one end of England listened to the modulated German
transmitter. The audio went across Britain to where a transmitter
on the same frequency rebroadcast it. Since the UK transmitter
was closer to the bomber.......

--
A host is a host from coast to
& no one will talk to a host that's close........[v].(301) 56-LINUX
Unless the host (that isn't close).........................pob 1433
is busy, hung or dead....................................20915-1433

"David Lesher" wrote in message
...
rnf2 writes:

There was also one German navaid that was not jammed but spoofed; a
receiver at one end of England listened to the modulated German
transmitter. The audio went across Britain to where a transmitter
on the same frequency rebroadcast it. Since the UK transmitter
was closer to the bomber.......

Operation "Domino"
This was Y-Gerat (Y-Device) or Wotan II. The transmitter used was the
old 1930's Baird TV
transmitter at Alexandra Palace. It was a very effective
countermeasure. Wotan was the Norse god
with only one eye (one beam). It was also known as 'Benito'.
Basically the Y-Gerat worked by transmitting a single beam with Lorenz
characteristics, morse dots
received if you were on one side of the beam, dashes on the other and an
equisignal of continuous tone
if you were in the centre of the beam and on course. The bomb release
point was done by means of a
kind of remote Distance Measuring Equipment, in that a signal was sent
to a transponder in the aircraft and
a response returned, by measuring the delay between transmission of the
interrogation pulse and reception
of the response it was possible to calculate the distance fairly
accurately. A signal was sent to the aircraft to
release the bombs at the correct point allowing for altitude, speed and
distance to target etc.
The countermeasure involved intercepting the aircraft transponder signal
and retransmitting it through the
TV transmitter, which caused a false distance reading.

The earlier Knickebein (crooked leg) 2 beam system and the multi beam
X-gerat (X-device) had already
been countered. The loss of these was actually quite a blow, as the
later Y-Gerat was only capable
of handling one aircraft at a time, whereas Knickebein was in every
bomber. The Germans created a "Pathfinder"
force of their own, KG100, to use it.
Knickebein worked on the normal Lorenz frequencies around 30mhz and the
first jammers (code name 'Aspirin'
to counter the beams which were code named 'Headache') were actually
medical diathermy units which produced
powerful broadband noise.


The CO